"Yet there may be another reason for it, and I sometimes think that
the Kosekin may be nearer to the truth than we are. We have by nature
a strong love of life--it is our dominant feeling--but yet there is in
the minds of all men a deep underlying conviction of the vanity of
life, and the worthlessness. In all ages and among all races the best,
the purest, and the wisest have taught this truth--that human life is
not a blessing; that the evil predominates over the good; and that our
best hope is to gain a spirit of acquiescence with its inevitable
ills. All philosophy and all religions teach us this one solemn truth,
that in this life the evil surpasses the good. It has always been so.
Suffering has been the lot of all living things, from the giant of the
primeval swamps down to the smallest zoophyte. It is far more so with
man. Some favored classes in every age may furnish forth a few
individuals who may perhaps lead lives of self-indulgence and luxury;
but to the mass of mankind life has ever been, and must ever be, a
prolonged scene of labor intermingled with suffering. The great Indian
religions, whether Brahmanic or Buddhistic, teach as their cardinal
doctrine that life is an evil. Buddhism is more pronounced in this,
for it teaches more emphatically than even the Kosekin that the chief
end of man is to get rid of the curse of life and gain the bliss of
Nirvana, or annihilation. True, it does not take so practical a form
as among the Kosekin, yet it is believed by one-third of the human
race as the foundation of the religion in which they live and die. We
need not go to the Kosekin, however, for such maxims as these. The
intelligent Hindoos, the Chinese, the Japanese, with many other
nations, all cling firmly to this belief. Sakyamoum Gautama Buddha,
the son and heir of a mighty monarch, penetrated with the conviction
of the misery of life, left his throne, embraced a life of voluntary
poverty, want, and misery, so that he might find his way to a better
state--the end before him being this, that he might ultimately escape
from the curse of existence. He lived till old age, gained innumerable
followers, and left to them as a solemn legacy the maxim that not to
exist is better than to exist; that death is better than life. Since
his day millions of his followers have upheld his principles and lived
his life. Even among the joyous Greeks we find this feeling at times
bursting forth it comes when we least expect it, and not even a
Kosekin poet could express this view more forcibly than Sophocles in
the OEdipus at Colonus: